Redskins Football & Presidential Selections

17 times in a row is not chance: an inside joke?

From 1936 to 2008, when the Washington Redskins football team won the game before the election, the President's political party stayed in control of the White House. When the Redkins lost the game before the election, the incumbent President's political party lost control. This pattern was statistically significant and the odds of it being random chance was 2 to the minus 17th. 1 / 131,072 It seemed to be an inside joke from those who rig national elections - not just with faith based voting machines and voter suppression, but by pre-selection nominees and winners.

"Interference" by Dan Moldea documents systemic rigging in professional American football, certainly not all games but the industry isn't clean, either. It's likely that many, if not most, fans of "professional wrestling" realize that it's largely entertainment, not a "fair fight." Why is it so hard for people to recognize that some "elections" are like televised wrestling - a bruising contest rigged in advance?

2012 update: The Redskins Presidential Prediction System did not work for the Obama Rmoney contest. The Redskins lost the game before the election but Obama's party got to stay in the White House. Perhaps the joke has run its course, especially as it has received a small amount of attention in recent years and it doesn't lead to trust in the concept that the United States is really a democracy. Whether the Redskins correlation continues or not is just a sideshow for the illusion of genuine elections in America. Faith based voting machines, voter suppression and campaign finance corruption are all important considerations, but pre-selecting the range of acceptable candidates is probably even more critical for controlling the terms of acceptable debate.

2016 update: in 2016 the game was a tie, which may reflect the establishment's division over whether Trump would be a good front man or not.

game tie may or may not reflect Establishment divide about whether Trump would be a good front man

probability of this outcome (1936 through 2000) occurring due to chance
0.5^17 = .0000076 = .00076%

The football presidential prediction system did not work in 2004, since elites were divided

In 2000 the elites above the political parties were united on Bush "winning" regardless of what the vote count was, since the forces behind Bush had a plan to respond to the approaching petroleum peak and the forces behind Gore did not (9/11, Iraq War, USA PATRIOT act, etc). In 2004 the elites were more split, and the elite faction that wanted the good cops now seem to be triumphant (especially with the 2006 Congressional elections).

The point is that like sports, elections can be "fixed," too. Control
of the United States government is the biggest prize in world history,
the idea that those who own the country would "let the people decide"
is wonderfully naive and innocent but unlikely to be the reality.

The power elite have a twisted, mean sense of humor, and the Redskins Presidential Prediction System is probably one of its many manifestations.

A side note: the word "Redskins" is an antiquated, racist term that long ago should have been replaced with something less pejorative. No professional sports team in the US chooses racist stereotypes for other ethnic minority groups.

October 31, 2004: Redskins lose to Green Bay Packers in Wisconsin (the only community owned football team in the US)

The October 2004 lunar eclipse over North America was the night that
the Boston Red Sox won the World Series in Busch Stadium. For those who have
read about rigging of "sports" events, it seemed like an inside joke
- Boston beating Bush under the full moon eclipse. While Kerry did win the real
contest (not baseball), he wasn't allowed to become President by the secret,
actual government. Hopefully, future historians (if we survive) will be able
to fully describe all of the behind-the-scenes discussions, negotiations and
threats that kept the Kerry campaign from protesting about vote fraud that flipped
the election from Kerry to Bush.

Winning Tradition
Claim: The outcome of Washington Redskins home football games has correctly predicted the winner of every U.S. presidential election since 1936.
Status: Not any more.
Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2004]
FOOTBALL + ELECTION

Did you know....??
The Washington Redskins have proved to be a time-tested election predictor. In the previous 15 elections, if the Washington Redskins have lost their last home game prior to the election, the incumbent party has lost the White House. When they have won, the incumbent has stayed in power. ....
Origins: Our desire to understand and assert some control over the world around us is often manifested by our attempts to find predictive signs that enable us to prognosticate events — evenwhen there is no seeming connection between predictor and event. ...
A recent item of this ilk maintains that the results of the last game played at home by the NFL's Washington Redskins (a football team based in the national capital, Washington, D.C.) before the U.S. presidential elections has accurately foretold the winner of the last fifteen of those political contests, going back to 1944. If the Redskins win their last home game before the election, the party that occupies the White House continues to hold it; if the Redskins lose that last home game, the challenging party's candidate unseats the incumbent president. While we don't presume there is anything more than a random correlation between these factors, it is the case that the pattern held true even longer than claimed, stretching back over seventeen presidential elections since 1936 ...

.... it may serve the nation to some extent by sublimating violence that could be expressed in more dangerous forms. Football is part of the pornography of violence and, if we accept the liberal sociologists' view of such matters, it is perhaps wisest to let the Battle of America be won on the playing fields of RFK Stadium.

I say perhaps. The evidence is cloudy. We managed to engage in the most stupid war of our history while at the peak of arousal over professional football. And we are regressing into the state-contrived violence of capital punishment, SWAT squads, and massive subsidization of foreign and domestic police state activities apparently unappeased by the bruises of the NFL. But then, who knows what even more grizzly avocations we might find for ourselves and our nation were it not for the ritualistic release of our lust for battle on Sunday afternoons (and Monday evenings and Saturday afternoons and. . . )

"College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to humanity."
-- H. L. Mencken